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Dolphin History and Science
Reported by Mookeeo, Nina, and Doak
"We’re not going to share much of our dolphinalities here folks. If you want
to know more about the challenges we faced and our fun loving dolphinalities,
you’ll have to read ‘The Dolphins’ View.’ Our writer wanted us to discuss more
serious issues here, like history, legends, science, stuff like that. So this
won’t be as entertaining as our story but it will give you more information
about the issues and challenges that threaten all dolphins. Mookeeo will start.
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"Many different huwee cultures, like the Maoris of New Zealand, have myths
and legends about us. Ancient Greeks and Romans recorded dolphin stories. In
Greek mythology, we accompanied Poseidon, god of the sea, and Aphrodite, the
goddess of love and beauty, when she rose from the sea. In one legend, Apollo
led settlers to Delphi, the site of the Delphic Oracle. Greeks put us on murals,
vases and coins.
"Aristotle was the first to record that we were different than fish, that we
bear our young alive and suckle them, breathe air, and make underwater sounds.
He noted our voices in air too, but since dolphins don’t have vocal cords, 19th
and 20th century biologists scorned his observation as mythology until the
1950s."
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"Just like them, ain’t it? Always looking at things from their point of
view, never from ours. No wonder it took them so long to learn about us."
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"That’s true, Doak. That’s why our story is called ‘The Dolphins’ View,’
isn’t it? Now, let me continue…One of the more interesting stories the Greeks
recorded was about Arion, a poet and singer. Arion traveled to Greek colonies in
Italy and won fame and fortune with his music. When he chartered a ship for his
voyage home, the crewmen plotted to plunder his wealth and kill him, but they
granted his last request. Arion played sweet music with his strings, sang a song
and then jumped overboard."
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"Maybe the dolphins liked his music."
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"Could be, Nina, but the sailors expected him to drown and continued their
voyage. As the ship sailed away, dolphins came to Arion’s rescue and bore him
back to land. When he reached shore, Arion requested a meeting with the ruler of
the Greek city where the ship was expected to dock. The king was skeptical about
Arion’s story, but summoned the ship’s crew. The sailors told the king Arion was
put safely to port in Italy, while Arion was concealed nearby. When Arion
stepped out, the sailors were caught in a lie, and the king had them put to
justice."
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"Tell them about the Romans too, Mookeeo."
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"There’s a monument still standing in an Italian city of a boy riding a
dolphin dating back to the Roman Empire. Pliny, the Roman naturalist, also wrote
about a friendly dolphin at Hippo, who allowed people to ride his back. Pliny
wasn't as accurate as Aristotle though, and he liked to exaggerate for dramatic
effect."
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"Yeah, like he said a whale was 1000 ft long and 500 feet wide. He
contradicted himself too. Sometimes he said dolphins breathe water and sometimes
he said we breathe air."
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"That's right, Doak. As Europe sank into the Dark Ages, so did the science
and knowledge of dolphins and whales."
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"Yeah, dude. They went backwards, like they never read anything Aristotle wrote."
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"How about those drawings? They made whales look like monsters, like
dragons. They had pipes and chimneys spouting fountains of water and huge fangs
on their mouths and collars and crests on their necks and heads and they
attacked ships and ate sailors and…"
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"They were considered fish too, and the church said it was OK to eat them
on meatless Fridays."
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"Scientists think they know everything. They didn't know diddily. They
didn't even know that we've been helping native fishermen catch fish in Africa
and Brazil for hundreds of years."
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"Doak's right. We signal them, they put out their nets, we herd the fish
toward their nets, and we both catch fish."
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"Yeah, but did they learn about us through their scientists. They didn't
study us for more than a thousand years. It wasn't until the 18th century that
Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, classified us in the mammal family as cetaceans,
not as fish. From that point, science advanced slowly, partly because we're
difficult for them to study and partly because they were more interested in
whales, which they considered a natural resource. As long as the supply lasted,
there wasn't an incentive to study them."
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"Yeah, that's when they were slaughtering them; almost wiped them out."
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"That's true. It wasn't until whale populations declined, before and after
World War II, that they started studying us. In 1936, James Gray, a Cambridge
scientist, wondered how we could travel through water at up to 40 kilometers (25
miles) an hour. He performed tests with rigid models of a streamlined dolphin
body and calculated that it was theoretically impossible for us to attain such
speeds because the energy required was 7 to 10 times greater than what our
muscles could produce."
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"See, they didn't know hardly anything about us, did they?"
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"Yeah, but he did propose two possible solutions to this 'paradox': either
our muscles were able to generate much more energy than the muscles of other
animals or we were able to reduce the friction drag of water as it passed over
our bodies. Professor Gray concluded: ‘Nature's design for a dolphin is much
more efficient than any submarine or torpedo yet produced by man.’ This was an
important finding for them because water adheres and forms eddies on a ship's
skin, slowing its passage through water, and their naval architects are always
looking for ways to reduce drag. That’s why they studied us.
"In 1938, a German researcher, Max Kramer, patented a ‘Device for the
Reduction of Friction Drag,’ which involved a method of reducing the turbulence
caused by the flow of water over a battleship or air over a missile. The Second
World War halted his work, but after the war he came to America, and saw
dolphins for the first time when he crossed the ocean. Kramer was fascinated by
our swift, graceful swimming and decided to learn more about us. In 1955, he
examined dolphin skin under a microscope - and found that our outer skin
consists of a soft, waterlogged coating on a hard, fatty inner skin."
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"Ah ha! So he found out that our outer skin isn’t waterproof."
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"That's right. Our outer coating - only 1.5 mm (1/16 inch) thick - is made
up of a diaphragm resting on thousands of tiny pillars, with waterlogged, spongy
material between them. So, every tiny oscillation in the water on any part of
our body's surface is adjusted automatically. Kramer announced that he had
discovered 'a highly refined realization of the basic idea' of his 1938 patent.
Tests with simulated models proved that this design reduced surface drag by as
much as 60 per cent!
"In later research, they found we have unusually large surface skin cells
that slough off easily. British researchers theorized that our skin cells slide
away, shedding the very surface that causes drag. Eventually, scientists
concluded that the attachment of our upper skin to lower skin and of our whole
skin to our blubber gives our body surface physical characteristics similar to a
liquid, kind of like a liquid moving through a liquid, instead of a solid moving
through a liquid. So when we swim, water flows over our body at the same speed
as water farther away, reducing drag, giving us laminar flow."
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"Ah yes (Nina mimics W.C. Fields). Go with the flow."
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"So they study us so that they can make better weapons, huh?"
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"Not always. In 1950, Alan Boyden and Douglas Gemeroy from Rutgers
University compared blood proteins of cetaceans to other mammal groups and found
them most similar to artiodactyls and ungulates, hoofed animals, like goats,
cattle and hippos. They think we evolved from them."
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"So what? When did they figure out we use sonar?"
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"That took a while. Aristotle was the first to note that we have the power
of hearing, with no ears. But it wasn't until 1947, when Arthur McBride, the
first curator of Marine Studios, recorded observations suggesting that we might
have sonar. In the early 1950's, Winthrop Kellogg of Florida State and,
independently, William Schevill and Barbara Lawrence of Woods Hole, presented
experimental evidence that we navigate and locate objects by sonar. Ken Norris
proved it conclusively in 1960 when he demonstrated that a dolphin, wearing soft
rubber suction cups over its eyes, could navigate through a maze of pipes in a
tank.
"John Lilly is probably the most famous dolphin scientist. He discovered that
we direct and focus sound with our melon, similar to the way a lens bends light
and he tried to communicate with dolphins."
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"How did he do that?"
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"He tried several different methods, including using computers, but the
first time, he tried to train three dolphins to imitate human speech."
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"That’s hard to do without vocal cords. We vocalize underwater with our
blowholes closed. To make human sounds, we would have to vocalize in air with
our blowholes open and we would have to reduce our sound frequency to their
hearing range."
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"That’s right, pretty hard to do, isn’t it? Did you know Lilly also
accidentally killed dolphins by anesthetizing them until he figured out that we
have to be conscious to breathe? Then when he said our big brains made us as
smart or smarter than humans, people started talking about dolphin intelligence,
but he got a lot of flak from other scientists."
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"Well, boys, did you know huwees have a brain almost as big as ours?"
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"Yeah, but the real question is how are they smart and how
are they built for their environment? It’s not just their brain that makes them
intelligent. Huwees have a big advantage with a thumb on their hands that allows
them to make tools."
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"Except for killing dolphins, Lilly might be a cool dude. Didn't he
challenge man's perception of his place as master of the universe?"
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"Yeah, he's controversial, because scientists consider his ideas
speculation. Then when he experimented with drugs and isolation tanks, he lost
more credibility in the scientific establishment."
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"But didn't Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer and cosmologist, work with him?"
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"No. Carl Sagan did visit Lilly’s St. Thomas lab in 1963 and met Elvar, a
dolphin Lilly trained to imitate human words and phrases. Elvar approached
Sagan, rolled on his back to get a tummy rub, and Sagan obliged. Elvar swam to
the other side of the tank and returned; this time his belly was six inches
under water. Sagan rolled up his sleeves and rubbed Elvar again. Elvar swam away
and back again, this time, 12 inches underwater. Sagan took off his jacket,
rolled up his sleeves and obliged again. The next time Elvar came back three
feet underwater but Sagan didn't want to take off his shirt to rub him.
Suddenly, Elvar stood on his tail, towering above Sagan, and said, "More!" Sagan
was amazed and told Lilly about it but that's the only contact between Sagan and
Lilly I know about."
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"So, who was the best dolphin scientist, Costeau?"
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"Jacques Costeau studied everything underwater, including Nina, not you
Nina, this was a different Nina, - a dolphin who befriended humans off Portugal.
Dr. Ken Norris from U.C. Santa Cruz specialized in dolphins and was probably the
greatest dolphin scientist. He discovered we receive sound through our lower
jaw, hypothesized that we stun our prey with sonar, wrote numerous articles for
scientific journals, edited ‘Dolphin Societies,’ appeared on documentaries and
TV interviews supporting dolphins, and launched the careers of many scientists
who followed him."
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"Norris studied spinners like me off the Kona coast in Hawaii for 10 or 11
years."
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"Didn't our writer meet Professor Norris?"
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"Yeah, he did. When he was doing research for our story, he visited Dr.
Norris at his ranch in Santa Cruz. Such a great guy, warm, personable, and
extremely knowledgeable, our writer said. It was a long time ago. He remembered
that Dr. Norris had lots of unusual animals on his ranch - he thought he
remembered llamas, maybe zebras too, and he remembered something inside the
house, like a liberated parrot without a cage that flew around inside the house,
something like that.
"At that point, our writer knew a lot about our physical characteristics but
not much about our social interactions. Norris referred him to ‘Dolphin
Societies,’ a book he had edited with Karen Pryor that included research from a
lot of scientists working with dolphins.
"One of them was Rachel Smolker, who studied Nicky, Puck, Holeyfin, Snubnose,
and the other dolphins at Monkey Mia. She wrote ‘To Touch a Wild Dolphin’ and
her research team reported that we have rivalries, politics, and complicated
alliances, just like huwees do. Some newspapers wrote that we aren't as benign
as huwees thought we were, that we had a ‘dark side.’"
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"She's the one who reported that sometimes you boys gang up on dolphinas."
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"So? Did they expect us to be just like them? They do that sometimes too,
you know."
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"She compared some of our social relationships to theirs - like their moral
values. She noticed that we don't steal food from each other like huwees and
seagulls do."
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"Wasn’t some of Dr. Louis Herman’s research in her book?"
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"No, some of his work was included in ‘Dolphin Societies.’ Herman is the
scientist from the University of Hawaii who did dolphin communication research
with hand and arm signals. He did experiments rearranging ‘words,’ like nouns
and objects, stuff like that, and reported that dolphins can understand human
sentences."
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"Big deal, they still can’t understand our words – forget about sentences."
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"OK dude, you know how I feel about slavery, when huwees think they ‘own’
us. Tell them how Dr. Herman lost ‘his’ dolphins."
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"Some of Dr. Herman’s workers didn’t think dolphins should be held captive,
so they freed them to the open sea. But, you gotta understand Doak, nobody knows
whether or not those dolphins survived."
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"What about Flipper?"
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"Our great ambassador. Flipper's 1963 movie and the TV series that followed
did more to endear people to dolphins than anything before or since. The only
thing close is Keiko from Free Willy."
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"Tell them about Ric O’Barry, Flipper's trainer. Flipper died in his arms."
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"You're right and ever since then O’Barry dedicated himself to setting
dolphins free."
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"He's a hero. He received the 1991 United Nations Environmental Achievement
Award for his work on dolphin re-adaptation. He founded Dolphin Project and
wrote ‘To Free a Dolphin’ and ‘Behind the Dolphin Smile.’ He freed five
dolphins. Flipper of Brazil was the most extreme cause he was in captivity 12
years before O’Barry freed him. National Geographic Society documented the
story. O’Barry ‘untrained’ Flipper so that he could survive in the wild.
"He's had some battles too, including battles with Dolphin Research Center
(DRC)."
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"Oh, that place. They claim to serve the best interests of dolphins.
Our writer visited DRC and fell for their story too, at first. It’s the captive
dolphin industry PR – you know radical animal activists are reckless with
dolphin lives cause captive dolphins can’t survive in the wild."
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"How many times have we heard that song?"
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"Our writer thought DRC was different until he got a copy of the Marine
Mammal Inventory Report showing that Chispa was transferred from DRC to
Connyland, a disco in Switzerland."
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"Transferred? That means sold, doesn’t it?"
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"Not necessarily. They denied outright selling but they may have helped
capture, board, and train dolphins before they transferred them. It’s reasonable
to assume they profited from trafficking in dolphins. That’s how huwees do
business, isn’t it? Here’s the point: how could it possibly be in a dolphin’s
best interests to be behind a glass wall at a disco?"
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"You boys know how I like to dance. Maybe if it was one of us, we could get
out on the dance floor – show the huwees a few dolphin moves too. But a dolphin
that hasn’t been bioengineered like us has to stay in the water."
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"That’s right and the light and noise disturbs a dolphin’s life. How can
they sleep? What if they don’t like disco music? How is that in a dolphin’s best
interests?"
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"Our writer exchanged Emails with DRC to get their side of the story but
they kept dancing around the issue with denials that were not directly related
to Chispa. Then he saw allegations on the Internet that DRC delivered dolphins
to a shopping center in Edmonton and amusement parks in Finland and the Canary
Islands. After all that, he concluded that DRC violated their own mission."
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"What about O’Barry’s battles with the government? There isn’t any law
about releasing dolphins but government bureaucrats assumed a lot of power."
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"I didn’t know a government agency could usurp Congress’ power to create
laws. The National Marine Fisheries Service and all government agencies are
supposed to enforce laws, not create them, but O’Barry had a nightmare with
them."
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"So…what about the inmates? They’re all in jail and none of them has
committed a crime. They’re all innocent."
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"I know how you feel about captive dolphins, Doak, but they're ambassadors
too. Even O’Barry says not all dolphins, especially those born in captivity, are
candidates to be free. Some wouldn’t adjust to survive to the wild. What do you
want to do, sentence them to starve to death?"
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"Swee you! Like the Revolutionary War dude said: ‘Give me liberty or give
me death.’ Give them the choice too!"
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"Settle down, Doak. All but one of the dolphins that were released from
DRC’s pens during a hurricane came back. Other dolphins that haven’t been
properly trained for release have been seen begging for food from huwees in
boats. And don’t forget, if it wasn’t for our ambassadors, we wouldn’t have MMPA
and other environmental laws designed to protect us. So it ain't that easy."
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"Where are you getting this ‘ambassador’ stuff from? They ain’t
ambassadors, they’re victims. What’s wrong with you? You sound like a PR dude
for the captivity industry."
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"Doak’s got a point, Mookeeo. The mantra of the captive dolphin industry is
that dolphins are better off remaining in their tank or small enclosure in the
sea, because they would starve if they were released. While not all captive
dolphins can be successfully released back into the wild, they can all be
readapted to a more natural environment and live a better life, like a sea pen
where they can experience the natural rhythms of the sea, the tides, currents,
live fish, and other sea life. Dolphins are not better off remaining in a
boring tank with nothing to see but concrete walls. Swee! They can’t even
effectively use their sonic senses in those tanks."
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"You’re right, those are good points, but we can also agree that Flipper,
Keiko, and captive dolphins set the stage for our arrival."
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"Yeah, but its been a rough journey. We had the holocaust and tuna nets and
we still have ‘bycatch’ and Japanese dolphin slaughters and fighting Congress
for this and that…"
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"That sweeing holocaust was so gross I don’t like to talk about it anymore
and I’m sure Nina doesn’t either, after the tragedy she went through. It’s all
in our novel."
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"I agree. If people want to learn more about it, they can read the sources
our writer put at the end of our discussion."
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"Hey dude, people don’t have to read that stuff. Let them check out ‘Oil
and Hazardous Materials Response Reports’ that NOAA publishes every year to see
how they’re sweeing up our home, our ocean. Wonder how they’d like it if we
dumped stuff like that on their lawns or inside their houses."
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"Settle down, Doak."
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"No, you settle down! Like I said before, you became too sweeing mellow
after they downloaded that financial planner into you."
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"Now, now boys. No need to repeat our trials and tribulations here. If
people want to find out about it, they can read the novel."
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"The novel doesn’t tell them everything. It doesn’t say much about tuna
nets."
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"It wouldn’t be very entertaining if we told them all our problems now,
would it? That’s why our writer tried to make our story light, entertaining and
funny."
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"That’s right. That’s why we’re talking about our history here, so people
can get the serious stuff if they want it. Now, about tuna nets, there’s an
interesting story here. The international tuna fishery killed more than seven
million dolphins the last four decades of the twentieth century."
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"Seven million? That’s about the population of New York City, isn’t it?"
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"Could be. Dr. William Perrin, a biologist with the National Marine
Fisheries Service, was the first person to bring the dolphin slaughter by
fishing boats with purse-seine nets to the attention of the public and was
partly responsible for inclusion of this clause in the Marine Mammal Protection
Act (MMPA) of 1972: ‘…the incidental kill or serious injury of marine mammals in
the course of commercial fishing operations be reduced to insignificant levels
approaching zero mortality and serious injury rate.’
"MMPA was amended in 1984, funding was reduced, and because dolphin quotas
only applied to the U.S. fleet, many ships re-registered under foreign flags.
Then in 1988, Sam LaBudde, working with David Phillips from Earth Island
Institute and working under cover as a cook, filmed dolphins thrashing in
terror, drowning, maimed, or crushed in winches, and when the TV networks got
it, dolphin blood splashed into American living rooms.
"Then a model, who had swum with dolphins, cried when she saw his film and
introduced herself to LaBudde. She was married to Jerry Moss, a record company
executive, and they hosted a Hollywood event in which LaBudde called for a
boycott of H.J. Heinz, the giant food company that was parent of Star-Kist.
Afterwards, Moss had lunch with Anthony O’Reilly, the chairman of Heinz and they
discussed the issue. The boycott grew in strength and a few months later,
O’Reilly made a stunning announcement – Star-Kist would no longer purchase tuna
caught with purse-seine nets or drift nets. That’s how ‘dolphin-safe’ was born
on American tuna cans. It was a brilliant public relations move by Star-Kist and
it compelled other tuna canning companies to follow Star-Kist’s lead."
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"So, are we playing connections, now? An activist, an environmental
organization, a model, a record company executive, and an enlightened food
company executive, all made decisions that saved dolphins."
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"It ain’t that easy."
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"You’re right, Doak, it ain’t. In 1999, one week after Earth Day, under
pressure from free-trade advocates in the Clinton Administration, U.S. Commerce
Secretary William Daly betrayed dolphins and environmentalists by weakening
dolphin-safe standards to open U.S. markets to foreign fisherman. But the three
major U.S. tuna companies, Star-Kist, Bumble Bee, and Chicken of the Sea, told
him they intend to retain the original dolphin-safe policy.
"Then there’s the Bush Administration – they’re worse, and Congress is always
looking to cut funding for environmental issues."
"As bad as the U.S. is, other countries are worse. The Russians are still
capturing us for the dolphin slave trade. The Solomon Islands had a huge capture
in 2003. The Japanese are the worst of all. They capture a few of us, they
slaughter us so we don’t take their fish, then they eat us too!"
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"Listen boys, enough of this serious stuff. We’re not showing our
dolphinalities here. Why don’t you boys come up and see me sometime? Let’s swim
back to our novel and have some fun."
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"Yeah, there’s nothing better than Nina’s hana."
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"You got that right, dude. We’re outta here."
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Sources
In the course of writing our novel, our writer read a few hundred books about whales and dolphins. He didn't use footnotes because this discussion is not intended to be a scholarly report, but some of his sources include:
The first dolphin holocaust is reported in "Clinical Investigation of the 1987-88 Mass Mortality of Bottlenose Dolphins Along the U.S. Central and South Atlantic Coast," reported to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Office of Naval Research, and the Marine Mammal Commission.
The second holocaust is reported in "Report on Investigation of 1990 Gulf of Mexico Bottlenose Dolphins Strandings" to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Other articles pertinent to the dolphin holocausts are reported in "Journal of Wildlife Diseases," 30(4), 1994, pp 567-576, and "Emerging Infectious Diseases," July-September 1996.
"To Touch a Wild Dolphin," Rachel Smolker
"The Lives of Whales and Dolphins," Richard Conner
"Dolphin Societies," Ken Norris and Karen Pryor
"Marine Mammals and Man, the Navy's Porpoises and Sea Lions," Forrest Wood
"So Remorseless a Havoc, of Dolphins, Whales & Men," Robert McNally
"To Free a Dolphin," Richard O’Barry with Keith Coulbourn
"The Bottlenose Dolphin," Stephen Leatherwood and Randall Reeves
"The Greenpeace Book of Dolphins," John May
"Dolphin Chronicles," Carol Howard
"Dolphin Days," Ken Norris
"Dolphinaria in Europe, Animal Protection from a Legal Perspective," Antoine Goetschel, Swiss Working Group for the Protection of Marine Mammals
Web sites pertinent to the dolphin captivity issue include:
http://www.freethedolphins.com
http://www.dolphinproject.org
in Canada: http://www.zoocheck.com
in Switzerland: http://www.asms-swiss.org
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